Debi Cornwall Explores How Performance and Role-playing Feed into the idea of Citizenship

© Debi Cornwall / Prix Elyseé

© Debi Cornwall / Prix Elyseé

© Debi Cornwall / Prix Elyseé

© Debi Cornwall / Prix Elyseé

© Debi Cornwall / Prix Elyseé

© Debi Cornwall / Prix Elyseé

© Debi Cornwall / Prix Elyseé

© Debi Cornwall / Prix Elyseé

Debi Cornwall is a conceptual documentary artist who returned to visual expression in 2014 after a 12-year career as a civil-rights lawyer. Employing absurdity and dark humor, she excavates invisible systems by layering still and moving images with testimony and archival material.

In this series, Model Citizens, which is still in progress, she explores how staging, performance and role-playing feed into the idea of citizenship in our Western societies. The photographic medium becomes here a tool for political analysis. Selected among the eight nominated projects of the Prix Elysée 2023, “Debi Cornwall’s work is in line with current events”, underlines the jury, “and is an important contribution that is timely, given the effect of fake news in our societies. Throught her research, the artist questions the blurred line between truth and fiction. The project, which is both a political and intellectual commitment, points to the urgency and necessity of questioning photography as a proof. The impact of fake news is not limited to the United States – the artist is telling a local story that talks about global issues. We are convinced that with the Prix Elysée, Debi Cornwall will reach a new and wider audience and that the prize will help increase her visibility in Europe.”